Ulduar Discussion Thread

[Mordekhuul]

I'm starting this thread as a discussion place for Ulduar bosses. Contribute or read as desired.

We spent a few hours in there last night (the 10 man, our 25 man run is tonight).

Flame Leviathan is fun and really, really easy with all four towers dead. Next week we'll definitely keep 1-4 of them up.

We spent a lot of time before him wandering around figuring out where everything is, what our tanks do, etc, which was pretty fun.

We worked on XT-002 Deconstructor then, and wow.....it was fun and tough. Wearing tier 7.5 gear we didn't beat the enrage, which I find odd. You can discount the first 2-3 pulls, where we didn't realize there were two huge groups of trash mobs in the corners of the room that we needed to clear (lol), but then after that there isn't a whole lot to the fight and we still came up short.

We even switched to a single tank strat (our druid OT went to his cat dual spec and did DPS) and a double-healer strat (had our shaman swap to elemental) and still missed the enrage by 6.5% on our best pull.

It really made us wonder if we were doing something wrong, considering Ulduar is theoretically tuned for players with lower iLevel gear than us. Our line-up:

tankadin
feral druid dual'd to cat

holy priest
healadin

resto shaman dual'd to elemental
elemental shaman
death knight
shadowpriest
mage
enhancement shaman

Our approacht o XT was for me to tank him near the stairs and the raid to fan out to the left, right, and middle. We did not kill the heart after some initial attempts to do hard mode.

When add phases started our DPS would split up and kill adds, with our melee and single-target DPS going back on the boss when he became active, leaving our AOE dps'ers to deal with adds unless they needed extra help due to extra spawns on their side.

Our feral druid would go bear briefly when an elite add spawned and drag it near me so I could taunt it, and I would off-tank all adds throughout the fight (they did no damage to me even in my EF/Avoidance gear - I full blocked most of their attacks).

I'm pretty sure no repair bots reached the boss on our best attempt too.

[Concillian]

We'll be going in tonight. I keep scrounging around for more 10-man deconstructor info, but there isn't a lot of info, best I can tell there isn't an aspect that you missed, the DPS check is just very, very hard to beat. I'm guessing they will nerf the enrage at some point in the next week or two.

10-man Leviathan hard mode (and presumably all the 10-man hard modes) drops Conquest badges.

This is a bleassing and a curse for 10-man guilds. Good that they get badges that can get decent gear not reliant on RNG. Bad that this will encourage 25 man guilds to run double locks (10 and 25) so that they get their tier pieces quicker, which will mean the hard mode strats available will once again be poisoned by 25 man geared people strats (i.e. assuming higher DPS, tank health, etc... than is possible in real 10 man gear).


Here's an armory of someone who claimed they killed Deconstructor 5 seconds into the enrage:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.x...romaggus&n=Lifa

Looking at their gear, they are nearly Best-in-slot 25 man geared (ilvl 213 with some ilvl 226). This leaves me little hope for people with near Best-in-slot 10 man gear from Naxx (ilvl 200 with some ilvl 213)

[Taelas]

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f206/48643-...html#post209124

TS guide to Deconstructor.

[PapaSmurf]

This thread indicates that they may have already hotfixed the enrage timer back to 8 minutes.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...418872551&sid=1

[Concillian]

This thread indicates that they may have already hotfixed the enrage timer back to 8 minutes.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...418872551&sid=1

There are three things I've read today:
1) in combat at start of entering zone = start enrage timer early
2) this post, but this is literally the only mention I've seen of it
3) DPSing the heart (but not killing it) on the robot phases = damage to the boss when he acivates again, and this gives more time for DPS that people were previously not using for DPSing the boss.

I'd be disappointed if they both patched to 8 minutes AND people found that DPSing the heart was extra damage. Though I guess that's still a pretty serious hard mode if you need to effectively do 140% damage in 8 minutes (DPS down 25%, kill heart, he heals, DPS 100%)

[Concillian]

Wednesday evening update from Daelo:

Code:

Here's the current issues with Ulduar we're currently investigating.
UPDATE: Wednesday Afternoon at 6:30pm PDT.

Siege Engines that use Steam Rush while on a ramp sometimes fall through the world.
We currently have no fix for this, the workaround is simply to not cast Steam Rush on the ramps. The ability works fine in the Flame Leviathan fight and other flat ground.

The two trash pulls in front of XT-002 Deconstructor are linked.
UPDATE: We've applied another hotfix to prevent the trash from spawning. This hotfix will require a soft reset of your raid instance, already existing trash is not despawned by the fix. If you still have problems with trash, post here.

Shattering an Iron Construct in the Ignis the Furnace Master encounter does not properly reduce the number of stacks of Strength of the Creator on Ignis.
This has been hotfixed so that shattering a Construct removes one stack application of Strength of the Creator.

There are reports that players are being melee'd by Ignis while in the slag pot, and on the charge before a player is placed in the slag pot.
The hotfix for this has been deployed. The hotfix also corrected an issue where Offtanks in 25 player versions of the encounter could be put in the slag pot. That should no longer be possible in either 10 or 25 player raids.

You are placed into combat when near XT-002 Deconstructor before you have engaged the encounter.
UPDATE: This has been hotfixed on all realms.

I believe the last two points are the added ones this evening. Hotfix likely fixed issues with both Ingis and Deconstructor.

[Mordekhuul]

Wednesday evening update from Daelo:

Code:

There are reports that players are being melee'd by Ignis while in the slag pot, and on the charge before a player is placed in the slag pot.

The hotfix for this has been deployed. The hotfix also corrected an issue where Offtanks in 25 player versions of the encounter could be put in the slag pot. That should no longer be possible in either 10 or 25 player raids.

You are placed into combat when near XT-002 Deconstructor before you have engaged the encounter.
UPDATE: This has been hotfixed on all realms.

Well, I can confirm that their hotfixes for Ignis didn't work or weren't deployed last night. We saw that blue post as well as we started working on Ignis, and every pull saw 2-3 people getting one-shot by Ignis early in the fight as he ran over to them for slag pot goodness.

Also, I was the OT, and was put in the slag pot while I was in the middle of tanking a construct.

Their fix for XT worked though. We didn't enter combat until my avenger shield smacked him and definitely doing DPS to the heart took his life down faster. It was a 5 minute 15s kill I believe.

We didn't see any bugs on Razorscale, so that is a good one to hit along with XT if you want.

[Jester]

Since this is the Ulduar thread, I suppose this should go here.

Ensidia just killed Yogg-Saron. What hard modes and Algalon bring, we shall see, but if the world's best guild can clear the place out in 2 days, I think us mere mortals have a pretty good shot at the place.

-Jester

[Taelas]

Two days? I think you mean one. Ensidia is a European guild and could only start Wednesday evening. Hell, make it one night.

I'm a little disappointed.

[Skandranon]

Easy modes are easy, and they finally have the 10/25 scaling right (which is to say that everything in 10 is FAR easier than in 25). We've blind one-shot things in both 10 and 25, but way more in 10. I expect to get a 10 man Yogg kill tonight or by Saturday at the latest.

[Jester]

Two days? I think you mean one. Ensidia is a European guild and could only start Wednesday evening. Hell, make it one night.

I'm a little disappointed.

Well, 24 hours passed from the first European kill to Ensidia downing Yogg-Saron, which I guess, if you're raiding the entire time, is "one day," although it's a hell of a long day. It's definitely not just one night.

However, it's done. If there is something to challenge the major guilds, it'll have to be hard modes and Algalon.

-Jester

[shoju]

Well, 24 hours passed from the first European kill to Ensidia downing Yogg-Saron, which I guess, if you're raiding the entire time, is "one day," although it's a hell of a long day. It's definitely not just one night.

However, it's done. If there is something to challenge the major guilds, it'll have to be hard modes and Algalon.

-Jester

I really hope that algalon takes a while to see downed. You have hard modes in front of him, and then you have algalon himself who will crush souls for a while. If we don't see an algalon kill for a month, I would be pretty happy. Though, I'm pretty sure that Ensidia will kill him next week. Even on a light schedule for them,

wednesday- iron council down and get loot
thursday - hards modes down and able to head for algalon
friday- kill the rest of the place
Saturday - kill algalon

And that's assuming that they take their time.

[Kevin]

Easy modes are easy, and they finally have the 10/25 scaling right (which is to say that everything in 10 is FAR easier than in 25). We've blind one-shot things in both 10 and 25, but way more in 10. I expect to get a 10 man Yogg kill tonight or by Saturday at the latest.

Is 10 man easier than 25 man if you only have 10 man gear? I realize you probably can't answer this. I'm aware that 400 DPS more on the 6 or 7 DPS folks in a 10 man group that has 25 man gear is hard to mentally just throw out.

My hope is that 10 mans if you only have 10 man gear are as difficult as 25 mans if you have 25 man gear and that of course 10 mans with 25 man gear are easier than 25 mans in 25 man gear.

This would give 2 equivalent progression paths which is something Blizzard said they wanted to do and is one of the reasons why I felt that it was OK that 10 mans dropped weaker gear.

But that is how scaling should work and I'm fine with 10 man only guilds requiring different strats than 25 man guilds doing 10 man content.

[Taelas]

Well, 24 hours passed from the first European kill to Ensidia downing Yogg-Saron, which I guess, if you're raiding the entire time, is "one day," although it's a hell of a long day. It's definitely not just one night.

However, it's done. If there is something to challenge the major guilds, it'll have to be hard modes and Algalon.

-Jester

You have to take into account that Ensidia had a 7h downtime (according to their killshot, at least).

[Mavfin]

Two days? I think you mean one. Ensidia is a European guild and could only start Wednesday evening. Hell, make it one night.

I'm a little disappointed.

There is no way they could make the 'normal' modes so that guilds like Ensidia wouldn't have it cleared the first day or two, without making it a brick wall for a majority of guilds, and that's not good business. Also, don't you figure they were on the PTR, and already knew what to do? I don't base *anything* on what guilds like Ensidia do.

[PapaSmurf]

There is no way they could make the 'normal' modes so that guilds like Ensidia wouldn't have it cleared the first day or two, without making it a brick wall for a majority of guilds, and that's not good business. Also, don't you figure they were on the PTR, and already knew what to do? I don't base *anything* on what guilds like Ensidia do.

Agreed. Ulduar is not "cleared" until every boss has been defeated in the hardest mode. Let's see how long it takes Ensidia to clear every boss on hard mode. The fact that they had to put a decent level of effort into defeating yogg is encouraging to me.

[WimpySmurf]

There is no way they could make the 'normal' modes so that guilds like Ensidia wouldn't have it cleared the first day or two, without making it a brick wall for a majority of guilds, and that's not good business. Also, don't you figure they were on the PTR, and already knew what to do? I don't base *anything* on what guilds like Ensidia do.

Yogg and Algalon were never put on the PTR, so that fight was brand new to them.

-Wimpysmurf

[Sheep]

I haven't been inside, yet, but here's what I could round up on the tubes.

Flame Leviathan

Ignis the Furnace Master

Razorscale

XT-OOT Deconstructor
Don't forget to check out the Addendum video.

Iron Council/Assembly of Iron
(PTR strat)

Kologarn
(If doing damage to the hand is ostensibly the same as doing damage to Kologarn, why not kill the left hand (your right) after having dealt with the right hand?)

Auriaya
(PTR strat)

Hodir
(PTR strat)

Thorim
(PTR strat)

Freya
(PTR strat)

Mimiron
(PTR strat)

General Vezax

Yogg-Saron

Algalon the Observer


I'll update as more live strategies become available.

[Pantalaimon]

You have to take into account that Ensidia had a 7h downtime (according to their killshot, at least).

They also, as far as I know, skipped all optional bosses to beeline to Yogg. Kinda makes it cool, for once world firsts aren't all by the same guild.

Their downtime is definitely not atypical. I know we only got our first raid tonight due to realm instability, and not for lack of trying. We've spent 10ish hours since Tuesday zoning in and out of the instance portal trying to get a decent instance server that wouldn't drop us after 2 minutes. Beyond us, though, many high end guilds have gotten screwed to the tune of far worse than 7h downtime by server instability.

[Pantalaimon]

3) DPSing the heart (but not killing it) on the robot phases = damage to the boss when he acivates again, and this gives more time for DPS that people were previously not using for DPSing the boss.

As far as I know, this is working as intended. The heart takes double damage, and I'm assuming blizzard assumes you take advantage of that to beat the enrage timer. It wasn't even close for us on 25-man; I can't speak to ten, I'm avoiding them:P GL in there, Lurkers!